When Gov. Pat Quinn showed up April 10 at Davis Park to make an announcement about rail service, no one knew quite what it would be.

But it’s a fair statement to say he surprised practically everyone when he said he would devote $223 million in capital funding to the restoration of passenger trains between Rockford and Chicago by late 2015.

The money is largely for improving and signalizing about 50 miles of Union Pacific tracks between Rockford and Elgin. The line is used regularly by UP to serve the Fiat Chrysler assembly plant in Belvidere, but the tracks west to Rockford can only be used by trains going 10 mph. That part of the line is dark, meaning it has no signals to tell one train whether another train’s on the line.

Rockford had Amtrak service from early 1974 until summer 1981, when The Black Hawk was discontinued; most riders had stopped using it because it was unreliable.

Before May 1, 1971, when Amtrak was created, Rockford was served by the Illinois Central’s Hawkeye, the lone survivor among 22 daily trains that had served the Forest City on four railroads in the 1920s.

It helps to know what went wrong with The Black Hawk to make sure those things don’t happen again.

David Lindberg was an adviser to Mayor Bob McGaw on rail issues. McGaw had promised in his 1973 campaign to bring back the train, a promise he kept nine months after taking office.

The Black Hawk ran from Chicago to Rockford, Freeport, Galena and Dubuque, Iowa, on the old Illinois Central. After an initial surge of riders, problems started sabotaging the service.

“We could not depend on shoppers and leisure travelers for adequate ridership,” Lindberg said, “and the train got to Chicago too late” — 10:15 a.m. — “for business travelers to use it. The new train has to get there by 9 a.m.” Business travelers would have used the train if it arrived in Chicago earlier in the morning, he said.

Also, in 1974 Amtrak was new, a creation of the Nixon administration to take money-losing passenger trains off the railroads’ hands. Amtrak inherited a variety of old and sometimes broken equipment that the private railroads had neglected.

And the train took more than two hours to reach Chicago, so it was not competitive with cars. “It crawled the last 20 miles to Chicago.”

Finally, the old Illinois Central did not like running Amtrak’s trains, and The Black Hawk often ran late.

Amtrak and the Illinois Department of Transportation say the country’s mood had changed. In the early 1970s, passenger trains were thought to be a remnant of the past that would soon disappear for good. The government saw Amtrak as a way to give the passenger trains a relatively quick death over a few years.

But a funny thing happened. The remaining trains, when outfitted with new equipment and reliable engines, gained popularity nationwide. In Illinois, state-assisted passenger trains on three corridors out of Chicago saw record ridership.

“The ridership growth over the past eight years is phenomenal, up 85 percent (overall) and higher on the Carbondale and St. Louis corridors, where traffic has more than doubled,” said Joe Shacter, director of the Division of Public and Intermodal Transportation at IDOT.

“The public’s appetite for good rail service is there, and that’s why we’re very busy working to get the Rockford service started.

“We are now designing the upgrades to the Union Pacific line with IDOT engineers and Patrick Engineering, our consultant.”

Those upgrades include improving a Fox River bridge, building a crossover from Metra’s tracks to the Union Pacific west of Big Timber, and upgrading UP tracks from Big Timber to Rockford initially to 59 mph, then a year later to 79 mph when signaling is added. Top speed over Metra tracks from Big Timber to Chicago is 70 mph.

Initially, the Rockford train will use passenger coaches and engines like those used on other state-financed corridor trains. “We are building new equipment in Rochelle at Nippon-Sharyo,” said Marc Magliari, Amtrak spokesman in Chicago. Rockford trains eventually will get some of the new coaches.

“Our goal is to get new equipment on the (Rockford) service in the first two to three years,” Shacter said.

The service to Rockford probably won’t have food service, Magliari said, “because the mileage is short, similar to our Chicago-to-Milwaukee trains, which also don’t have food service.”

The schedule isn’t locked in. In its first year, the service will have one train a day to Chicago leaving Rockford in the morning and returning in the evening.

In the second year, a second train will be going in the opposite direction.

“We’re working toward having one train at each end of the line leaving between 6 and 8 in the morning and returning between 6 and 8 in the evening,” Shacter said. That will provide more flexibility for passengers.

Scheduling requires close coordination with Metra, which operates frequent commuter trains in the morning and evening rush hours.

Stations will be in downtown Rockford, Belvidere, Huntley, Elgin and Union Station in Chicago. The Rockford station will be off South Main Street, as close as possible to the planned hotel and conference center at the old Amerock building.

Plans for a temporary station in the old Chicago North Western depot on Seventh Street were scrapped. “Rockford agreed to a $5.5 million contribution for the station,” Shacter said.

Because the state couldn’t reach an agreement with Canadian National, the only railroad from Rockford to northwest Illinois, the train has to terminate in Rockford, where the Union Pacific line ends.

IDOT still hopes to break the stalemate with CN to extend service west of the Forest City to the Mississippi River.

Chuck Sweeny: 815-987-1366; csweeny@rrstar.com; @chucksweeny

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